Moon's Crash Course In Aesthetic Characters!
Hello! It's your fellow outcast Moon here, writing this "crash course" in aesthetic characters! Sit tight- we're gonna be talking for a while. Actually, get yer hot choco at the ready, this is probably going to be boring. Step 1- Find an aesthetic So the first step to creating aesthetic characters is finding their aesthetic. The easiest way is to open up yer search browser, create a new tab, and enter in the search bar either of these keywords: * aesthetics * nature aesthetics (since this is warrior cats) Once you hit enter you should see a plethora of aesthetics, like this screengrab from my computer. Well then you can just scroll...and scroll...and scroll till you find a suitable aesthetic that you really like and think, Well I can work with this. Now, save the image on your computer (right click -> save image as), and let's head onto the next step! Step 2- Building a concept So this part if you want to create a good, well developed character, read this part. If you don't you can skip to the next step, but we'll be using the content here for the next step as well. A good character needs a good concept, just like how skyscrapers rise from strong foundations. Now, aesthetic characters take it one step further, and it's even harder to create a good concept if you don't have a suitable aesthetic. Now rightfully once you save your aesthetic the framework of a character should get into your brain already. So let's just take an example, from an image I saved. Here, take this starry ocean picture. So let's see the key things in this picture. * There's a starry ocean. The waters are a piercing blue, and glitter with starlight. * The background is dark, illuminated by a few stars. * The setting is seemingly a remote island. With these three points you can already start to build a concept, but let's take each point and try to personify it into a character. It takes practice to not misinterpret it. * Starry Ocean: We all know the word "Star" is a sacred word in Warrior Cats, so we can assume this cat with this aesthetic has a very strong tie to StarClan- they may be a StarClan cat themselves, or they may be a medicine cat, an exceptionally skilled one. Some more indirect things from this point you can use is the piercing blue of the ocean- maybe the cat's eye color may reflect this, maybe when communicating with StarClan, their eyes glimmer with stars? And the ocean is a symbol of the unfathomable, so this cat may be enigmatic, perhaps slightly mysterious, with a hidden secret? These questions may already kickstart your brain into said overdrive. * Dark Background: Darkness is another significant thing in Warriors, one symbol being the Dark Forest. Perhaps this cat thinks of their power (mentioned above ^) as a curse? Or they may be dark pelted, say a gray solid cat or a sandy brown tabby. This cat may also have a dark past/future, with only slight glimmers of hope (signified by the few, faraway stars). Or has the cat been overused on their powers, and are slowly slipping into insanity? * Remote Setting: The cat's past may be shrouded, and faded, hard to remember. The cat may be distant, or unfriendly/cold. The cat may not be Clanborn, maybe a traveler, a loner, a kittypet, a rogue even, or maybe a drifter? With these points and concepts, we can certainly move onto the next step. Step 3- Making the Character Well now we can move on to the more general warriors stuff now. Appearance, personality traits, gender, sexuality, role, name, 'powers' and Clan. However, we can keep the aesthetics in mind when we are doing the sections Appearance, Personality Traits, Role, Name, Powers and Clan. We'll take our Starry Ocean aesthetic from the previous step into this one. Alright, so we'll do the first one, Appearance. Appearance We listed some appearance traits in the previous step - a dark pelt, blue eyes, and starry glimmers in those eyes. So, we're going to take the key colors from the aesthetic and coalesce it into a character's pelt and appearance in general. The cat should have a dark pelt. Some ideas would be: * A dark brown tabby. * A dark gray tabby. * A smokey gray tabby with hints of black. * A black and white tuxedo. * A black pelt with a paler underbelly. Of course, for the tabbies, the stripe patterns may vary, such as a spotted tabby (which in my opinion, are very cool), or a mackerel tabby. The tuxedo's white and black markings may be in different placings. For this character and this guide though, we're going to decide on a smokey gray tabby with hints of black. Something like this picture on the right but with tabby stripes and blue eyes -> Then we go onto the more trivial stuff- Fur length, ear spacing, ear size, paw size, whether or not the cat has a mane, how long is the tail, broad shoulders, muscular, lithe, wiry, scars or no scars etc. This is all up to you, the creator, but for me, and the sake of my fingers (I don't want to type ALL the possibilities), I'm just going to write a rough idea. * Fur length: Long * Ear spacing: Wide spaced * Ear size: Normal * Paw size: Big * Body structure: Lithe and sleek, with slightly broad shoulders. * Mane?: Yes, a slight mane. * Tail length: Quite long, a bit of a sweeping plume of a tail. * Scars: A small one across his muzzle and a large nick in the left ear Finally, one of the more important traits in an aesthetic character, the eye color. These range from blue, green, yellow, amber, orange, red, violet (heather blue), purple, hazel (hazel isn't brown, it's an eye color that changes according to light; it can be green or yelllow at times). The eyes can be slitted, narrowed, wide, small, cold, warm, fiery, chips of ice, whatever suits you, but I do prefer a detailed description of the cat's eyes. For this guide, our little cat will have: * Cold, frosty deep blue eyes with slitted pupils, and starlight glimmering in them. Now, that suits our little cat nicely, and wraps up the Appearance section. Onto Personality Traits! Personality Traits To make this shorter ( we can develop the personality more in the next step ) we are going to do traits instead of a short summary. This makes it easier to read and easier to glean information from. Traits are roughly divided into three sections - Positive, Neutral and Negative. Positive traits are the good parts of the cat's personality. We don't want to have too many good parts, as that makes a 'perfect' character, aka a Mary Sue or Gary Stu, and we all hate Mary Sues/Gary Stus. About three is enough. Five is one too many, and four is a little overboard. Neutral traits are the 'eh' parts of the cat's personality. It's neither good nor bad, here or there. It's just... plain. NEUTRAL. Nothing special. And we don't want too many either, because we don't want another Lionblaze. Too many neutral traits make the cat boring and uninteresting. Two is enough. Negative traits are the bad parts of the cat's personality, the flaws. Too many flaws make a flawed character, but just the right amount of flaws is a balanced character. Three is enough, to balance out the positive traits. Now, time to get cracking! Let's view our aesthetic in the previous step, and craft a personality based off it! Positive Traits * Skilled * Good memory * Clever I chose these traits because one, the starry ocean symbolizes both the all knowing and the unfathomable. One needs to be skilled to be all knowing, yet needs to be clever and sharp too, to process the unfathomable. The good traits of our cat here is going to be representing the starry ocean. I added in good memory as a positive trait (it will come into play in the negative traits too) as in order to be skilled, you must remember. Neutral Traits * Enigmatic * Mysterious I don't have much to say. The neutral traits of our cat symbolize the remote island setting. Our cat is enigmatic, but it doesn't really affect anyone, and some things are best left unsaid! And since our cat is enigmatic, it makes sense they are hard to interpret, when they are burdened with their strong tie to StarClan, how would they feel? Mysterious compliments enigmatic, as the cat doesn't talk much and thus not many cats know much about the cat. Negative Traits * Gives up easily * Not resilient * Short sighted Because of his power he is a bit mentally exhausted, so he tends to make some bad decisions, resulting in his short sighted-ness of his decisions. And because he's so mentally exhausted, his resilience is low, so he gives up easily, never seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. This symbolizes the dark island with a few stars. GenderCategory:GuidesCategory:Characters Ehh this isn't too difficult. You know, there's only a bazillion genders out there, not just female and male. Demiboy, demigirl, agender, transgender, non-binary, genderfluid, etc. But we're gonna make this cat a boy. Sexuality This isn't too complicated if you're ''not ''making a LGBTQ+ character, but if you are, well there's a HECK load of sexualities you can choose from! Lesbian, gay, bi, ace, pan, etc. But since this month's pride month, we're gonna make him ace. Role Isn't it obvious? The symbolism of stars has been ''heavily ''mentioned throughout this character making process. We're obviously going to make him a medicine cat, no doubts about it. Name Now this is the fun part. But don’t give your cat names that just don’t make sense or doesn’t feel ‘wild’; that is unless the cat is a SkyClan cat - we all know Leafstar failed her naming class. A great source of warrior names is the Warrior Cats Name Dictionary, and I often use this as a reference when naming my warrior OCs! Click here for the name dictionary. So, about our cat’s name, I have gone searching through the Dictionary and pulled out a pretty good name: Smokewhisper. When taken literally it sound kinda weird, but the prefix and suffix meanings compliment each other well, and it matches his pelt. Smoke - Solitary; irritable; secretive; appearance of smoke. whisper -Quiet; secretive; sneaky. Doesn’t it make a good name? Powers Now if your cat is in a prophecy then this is the most important section, but if your cat is not then you can ignore this. You can give your cat any power as long as it’s not too overpowered and doesn’t make them a Mary Sue. Smokewhisper's power is an unusually strong tie to StarClan - so strong that StarClan cats can possess him/use him as some kind of tool. Clan This is easy. There's ThunderClan, WindClan, ShadowClan, RiverClan, SkyClan, StarClan, and the 'other ranks' like Loner, Rogue, Kittypet. I mean if you want to be that boring person you can choose ThunderClan but we're going to make Smokewhisper RiverClan because RiverClan is ''super ''under developed. And also because the aesthetic has an ocean. Oceans are water. Rivers are water. Therefore RiverClan. Step 4: Creating the Page Now this is the sorta hard part if you're a big fuss about detail like me, but I'll try to just write my page-making process as simple as possible if that even makes sense. First Step : Formatting the Page First you have to hit the create page button (this is obvious), then type in the name of your cat. For example, Smokewhisper. Adding the cat's Clan in brackets is optional - an example title would be Smokewhisper (RiverClan). Then you will be launched into source mode. For me (who has a decent amount of experience in coding) I would then use the aesthetic as reference and code an appropriate page. Standard format for me is to first put the aesthetic as the 'collapsible instruction command executor' (it's not an official term I just made it up). It basically means when you click on the image it opens up the rest of the text/page. Then I would code a gradient bordered page, with an infobox. I would also put a DISPLAYTITLE tag to make a custom title for the page without actually changing the page's name. Once I've tested everything to make sure the code doesn't mess up on me, I post the page. Second Step : Filling up the information Now we fill in the information. Usually I follow this format: Fill in the basic info like the cat's appearance. Then make 7 or 6 header/big text, in this order: Appearance, Personality, History, Nine Lives (If it's a leader), Relationships, Quotes, Trivia. !huge wip!Category:Work In Progress Category:Miscellaneous Category:Content (Mooneffects) Category:Help